


Steel and Spandex

by noodlebunny



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, M/M, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 21:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20896325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noodlebunny/pseuds/noodlebunny
Summary: Edward is a vigilante, and there’s a new hero in town.





	Steel and Spandex

**Author's Note:**

> twas digging around for fanfiction i never posted and came across quite possibly one of the stupidest, worst things ive ever written. please take it as an apology for not posting for like 2 years
> 
> warning for copious amounts of swearing. at 15 i was going through a phase ok

All five foot two inches of him is hurled at full speed through the air, colliding into the side of a hotdog stand, and that isn’t even the worst part of Ed’s day.

“Fuck. _Fuck_,” he groans, extracting himself from the splintered wood. He wipes ketchup off his suit. The owner of the stand, a pot-bellied man who clearly has no appreciation for everything hard-working vigilantes like Ed do for the city, yells at him. Possibly, he’s speaking in in Drachman. Either that, or Ed’s hit his head hard enough that his ears have finally had enough of his bullshit and have stopped processing sounds properly.

There isn’t time to check his hair for ketchup before something large and heavy and as fast as a bullet train barrels towards him.

Yeah, okay. The fight.

He leaps out the way, barely, and the maybe-salvageable remains of the stand are smushed flat by Gluttony’s rotund body. Holy fuck. _Insane_ property damage.

“Let me _eat_!” Gluttony roars, fat tears gathering in his glassy eyes. His wide maw drips with slobber.

“Sorry, big guy,” Ed calls, willing familiar energy to spark. He outstretches his arms with his hands open wide, and feels for the well in his stomach, guiding the crackling down his nerves and shaping it at the tips of his fingers until the earth groans and—

Within seconds a concrete spike juts into Gluttony’s stomach like a spit through an especially fatty hunk of meat. Usually, Ed might’ve been reserved about causing such severe harm, even to a cannibalistic villain, but by now he’s learned his lesson on how quickly the thing heals—or, more aptly put, the lesson’s been drilled into his brain by one too many nights dressing Gluttony-inflicted wounds.

Ed cracks his knuckles and rolls his shoulders. He feels like that’s a cool thing to do. It’s cool, right? “Sorry, innocent civilians and questionable food stands aren’t on the menu today,” he shouts righteously. It’s possible that his witty in-battle banter has seen better days.

“Fullmetal!” Oh, shit. Fucking hell, can’t Ed get one good day—just one _second_ of not having to witness the abhorrent, slimy presence of the ever-fucking smug—“That’s enough! How about you leave this to those of us who are actually qualified for once?”

Ed pauses to flip Mustang off—with his metal hand for added effect—which, in hindsight, wasn’t his grandest idea, because his moment of distraction lost a significant portion of road to Gluttony’s stomach and now Mustang’s _pissed as hell._

“It’s rogue ‘heroes’ like you,” Mustang spits, sending a ball of fire careening towards Gluttony, reducing him to bubbling fat before he begins to reform, “that make this job so damn difficult.”

Ed has a retort on the tip of his tongue when Gluttony’s stomach splits open, revealing blacker-than-black darkness, a huge, unblinking purple eye, and two rows of massive, squirming incisors.

It would’ve been a good retort, too.

He’s tempted to say, “Bye, Mustang, he’s all yours!” and crawl home for a long nap.

Nothing is ever that easy.

“Go suck your superior’s dick, Mustang, ’cause it’s about as useful as you’re gonna get.” Ed pulls his attention from Gluttony to glare, and it’s times like these that he’s glad for his design choice in covering the lower half of his face; he can’t imagine that his well-perfected _I wish you were dead right now_ glare would be as effective under a full mask.

Oh, great. Roy the Total Fucking Moron Mustang dragged his Merry Men along.

“We have the area secured, sir. Civilians evacuated.” Lieutenant Hawkeye cocks her gun, uniform sharp on her shoulders, and she might be the only officer Ed can stand. The rest of them, however, are just as bad as their ringleader.

“You should get out of here before you rip your tights, Fullmetal,” Mustang drawls, and Ed indulges in a brief fantasy including Mustang’s condescending smirk and a baseball bat. With nails.

“I fuckin’ _hate_ State Certified Heroes,” Ed mumbles. His suit is _cool_—red and black and under no circumstances tights. “Just ‘cause they’ve got matching uniforms—it’s not even a nice shade of blue, what the fuck—they think they can—”

The words die in his throat when Gluttony charges again; this time, though, Ed’s focus is entirely devoted to the blissful thought of strangling Roy Mustang, and he can’t move fast enough. The weight catches him in the chest and, before he can let out the first expletives that come to mind, he’s on the ground, rough tarmac burning like flames licking at his back, and a grotesquely tattooed tongue the size of his head drips wet saliva onto his face. He tries to kick out, but it’s hopelessly futile—Gluttony weighs similar to a truck, or maybe Central fucking Command, holy shit—his chest can’t even expand with all that weight on him, let alone get air in, and it’s like he’s choking under a hundred feet of mud clogged in his oesophagus.

“Fuck!” shouts Mustang, loudly, and Ed can’t help but agree with the sentiment.

Even his metal leg can’t find leverage, and Mustang is still shouting, and there’re sirens somewhere, but all Ed can think is how this is such an awful way to go, and Al deserves better than to find out his big brother was mauled to death on the nine o’clock news, his only remains being metal limbs and scraps of spandex—

Gluttony’s head detaches from his body in a clean slice, and rolls to the side with three sick thumps. Thick red blood pumps from his gaping neck, splashing over Ed’s face. He splutters and pushes at the headless body until it stumbles back, waving its arms like a zombie from a bad eighties horror movie, except the red isn’t food colouring. Ed’s seen worse. Nausea roils in his gut regardless.

He spits blood that isn’t his and chokes out, “What the hell?”

“Fullmetal!” Mustang cradles a smouldering ball of fire pointed directly at Gluttony, and yet he only stands there with his face twisted. “Get out the damn way!”

Gluttony’s head has regrown, and he’s not unlike a wild animal in his rabidity, but that isn’t what catches Ed’s attention.

It’s the new guy on the scene.

The first thought to cross Ed’s befuddled mind is _shit me, he’s tall_. Dude is, like, at least six foot, and his chest is broad too, and his hands—clawed hands—are encased in dark grey skin, like coal, like ashes, like the colour of billowing smoke, dripping with Gluttony’s blood. He reaches up to wipe at his cheeks, which only smears more red across them. Ed can’t make out many of his features behind a black mask concealing the upper half of his face.

He looks... badass. It crosses Ed’s mind that he almost died except he didn’t ’cause this dude in a black skin-tight get up just saved him from his fate as Gluttony’s Sunday brunch—

Tall, Dark and Handsome looks dead into Ed’s eyes with a gaze like obsidian. He opens his mouth, and says, “You sit right down, sweetheart, and let someone competent handle this one, hm?”

Something snaps, and Ed sees red.

“What in the _hell_ did you call me, you inflated dickhead—”

Gluttony roars. Dickhead grins.

Gluttony can’t be killed, at least not by just offing him over and over and hoping the outcome will be different even if the variables remain consistent; Ed knows this from five arduous years of getting his ass beat. Gluttony _cannot be killed._

But Dickhead doesn’t kill Gluttony. Dickhead just _completely decimates him_.

“Sir, Gluttony’s not regenerating!” someone from Mustang’s team—the smallest one, with the glasses and the telepathy—says after the worst of it seems over.

“No shit,” mutters Ed, because Gluttony is doing the impossible and disintegrating to ash beneath Dickhead’s feet. Dickhead leans down and appears to pluck something from the eroding flesh. Ed sees a flash of red in his grip and narrows his eyes.

“Who are you?” commands Mustang in his stupid Authority Voice. “Identify yourself.”

“I’m the one who just saved all your sorry asses,” says Dickhead, because that’s his name to Ed now, apparently. “But I guess you can call me Emperor.”

Emperor—stupid name, by the way, Ed thinks Dickhead suits him better—can only be looking at Ed when he cracks a grin. “Hope you enjoyed the show, _Fullmetal_.” Ed’s vigilante alias sounds like butter on Emperor’s tongue; it drips from him, crude and mocking. Then he pockets the red thing, bows deeply, and slips back into the darkness.

Ed’s vaguely aware of shouting, of Mustang’s annoying whiny voice going _Fullmetal, you stay right there_, of figures in blue surrounding what little remains of Gluttony. If he stays any longer they’ll turn their attention to him, and he has no desire to be caught tonight. The owner of the crushed hotdog stand is making his way towards him.

Ed pulls up his hood and summons a pillar of earth to lift him onto a nearby building. Once he starts running, soles thudding against roof after roof, early morning air sharp through the cloth of his mask, he finds he can’t stop.

* * *

Ed is, inevitably, late for work. He changes in an alley a block away, stuffing his suit in one of the various backpacks, and stumbles through the doors with his uniform rumpled. Six in the morning and he hasn't slept a second. It’s not a new feeling.

Still sucks ass.

Work is slow; it always is. Ed used to like Cretan food, but now he’s worked at a Cretan restaurant for almost a year, just the smell of the crap is too much. Tringham’s a bitch, yapping that Ed’s not nice enough to customers—for the last time, Ed’s not stooping to his level and sticking his ass in the air to wag his tail for tips—and though Rose is there to keep him sane, he feels himself fraying before noon rolls around.

He’s heading back in from his break and a well-earned coffee when Rose taps him on the arm. “Can you get table sixteen for me?”

Ed rubs his eyes. Goddamn hay fever season. “Yeah, sure.”

She smiles gratefully, which makes Ed feel a little less like human garbage, because Rose has one of those heart-lightening stomach-melting Disney princess smiles.

Table sixteen is on the other side of the restaurant. Ed’s entire right calf is bruised from playing Gluttony’s human rag doll, and the scarring on his other thigh is determined to ruin his entire life. Table sixteen is suddenly so far away.

He must look like he needs to piss real bad or something as he limps to the table, and he’s producing enough sweat to cover an elephant.

His mental metaphors deteriorate when he's in excruciating pain.

“Are you guys ready to order?” Ed says, fumbling for his notepad, definitely somewhere in his waist apron pocket.

”We are.”

That voice. Ed jerks his head up, and something in his head is screaming that he knows this guy, has heard his voice and recognises his eyes, but from where exactly eludes him. Privately, he thinks he’d remember if he’d seen that face before. It’s... a nice face. Ish. Relatively. Not too shabby, Ed supposes.

The girl accompanying Nice Face has dark, watchful eyes, messy bangs, and a serious-set frown. She’s watching Ed like she doesn’t quite trust anything about this place, from the grease on the seats to the _Best Central Kebabs_ sign that’s missing the vowels in _Central_. And also the _r_ and the _l_.

The feeling’s forgotten soon, though, because the dude is prattling off his order and Ed can’t keep up in his crappy handwriting because he’s ordering _everything_. Literally the _entire menu._

“Anything else?” Ed says after it’s over, a little shell shocked.

“Mm, no, I think that should be it!” He’s chirpy. Too chirpy for Ed’s sour mood. Any trace of recognition Ed had for him is now gone.

“Ok, cool. It, uh... might take a while to get everything, though.”

“Aha, that’s fine, that’s fine!”

Great.

Ed relays the order and spends about the next hour going back and forth from the kitchen to Nice-ish Face’s table, each time bringing out a new dish and taking back a whole stack of used plates. It’s ridiculous. His arms hurt even more. The grumpy looking girl doesn’t eat a thing, just watches Nice Face inhale everything with wary eyes, like she expects to have to jump in front of Nice Face any moment. _Relax, Lan Fan,_ Ed thinks he hears him say. Rose is staring at Nice Face in something akin to disbelief; is his face really that nice, even to Rose?

Only after the weird duo have left does Ed properly look at the bill and—

Holy _shit_, that’s a hell of a tip.

“I mean, seriously, who has that kind of money to throw around?” Ed says to Rose afterwards. “And who eats that much, anyway?”

“Ed, oh my god,” Rose says. She’s looking at Ed like he’s grown a second head.

“What?”

“I thought—you really didn’t know who that was—?”

“Should I have? Is he like, famous?”

“Is he _famous? _Are you kidding me?”

“Well, how am I supposed to know—“

Suddenly Tringham is there, inserting his nosy ass into their conversation. Again.

“You complete idiot,” Tringham, the real idiot, scoffs. “That was Ling Yao. Dumbass.”

“Who?”

Rose and Tringham really are looking at him like he’s grown a whole menagerie of new heads.

“Dude, his dad’s like... a super famous State Hero.”

“You know, Bradley? Also known as _King_?”

“And Ling’s massive online.”

“Like, so many followers.”

“Amestris’ sweetheart.”

“I mean, you can see why,” says Tringham, shrugging. At the look he gets from Rose and Ed, he deadpans, “What? He’s cute. And funny. And hot.”

“... Right,” says Ed, slowly. “Well, I’m gonna go pick up my brother from school. See you tomorrow, Rose.” She waves sweetly at him as he leaves. “You,” he glares at Tringham, “curl up and die.”

Tringham flips Ed off. Some things never change.

* * *

For once, Ed’s a little early picking Alphonse up. Some cop asks him why he’s not in school rather than loitering outside it, to which Ed replies that he’s eighteen and _graduated_, thank you. The cop blinks stupidly and says, “You look way younger,” which reminds Ed of Mustang’s stupid smug face, and then he just wants to punch something.

It’s been a hell of a day.

But Al comes out the gates of East Central High with a big goofy grin on his fourteen-year-old face, and the day starts to get better.

* * *

Later, when Al’s conked out on the couch, a thought comes back to Ed and he absently pulls up Twitter in his phone, careful not jostle Al. It only takes a few characters in the search bar for the user he’s looking for to pop up.

_Ling Yao._

_3.6 million followers._

Well, shit damn. Ed’s 27 followers suddenly looks as sad as that hotdog stand he crushed this morning.

Ed will not admit that he does a Wikipedia search, and he will not admit that he now knows just about all there is to publicly know about Ling Yao. He’s eighteen, like Ed, and Bradley, famed Hero King of Amestris, is indeed his adopted father.

With a whispered _what the hell_, Ed follows him on Twitter.

The most recent thing on his feed is a retweeted video of—

Of—

Of this morning, with Gluttony, and Mustang, and _Emperor_.

_Don’t watch it back, you moron,_ says the sensible voice in his head. Ed doesn’t even know why that voice is still there. It should probably have moved out by now. Got its own place, or something.

He practically relives each each blow again when he watches himself get tossed around by Gluttony in glorious phone camera quality. This morning’s fight really wasn’t his best. He hisses and rubs his bruises.

When Emperor shows up on the screen, Ed’s just about ready to hurl the thing across the room. Even his bruised ego has to admit that the new guy looks beyond cool, and Ed... well, Ed looks like he’s covered in ketchup and blood, and is doing a wonderful job of being incompetent.

The comments under the video generally go something like:

Damn, Fullmetal got his ass kicked.

And the video finally ends on Emperor bowing to Ed and leaving. The audio’s too crappy to pick up what he’s saying, but Ed remembers it well enough, clear as day and more infuriating than even Mustang’s taunts.

_Hope you enjoyed the show, Fullmetal._

Ed distracts himself by scrolling the rest of Ling’s account. He’s funny, and dumb, but in a charming kind of way. Sort of.

Beats thinking about Emperor, at least.

**Author's Note:**

> well that was terrible. hope you had fun if you made it to the end! i wrote up a whole massive plan for the rest of the fic (it’s BIG) so if there’s any interest i might write more! please let me know if you’d dig that :^)
> 
> thanks for reading!


End file.
